Also, since this is your main rig, you should adjust the max memory setting under host and your 1 vm's setting so that they don't default to use as much memory. running a single vm on a 2 gb system you only need to give the host setting ~ 500 mb although giving it ~ 800 mb will get the vm started faster by avoiding paging in linux. The vm can be set to the same value if you only run 1 vm. The default host parm on a 2gb rig is ~ 1.8 gb, and 896mb on a 1gb rig. On my quads with 2gb and 2 vm's I set the host parm to 1.6 gb and each vm's parm to 800 mb. Folding will work fine with the vm set at 400-500 mb but the vm becomes laggy to use and it takes a while for it to boot and for folding to get going since it ends up paging a lot until folding is fully running. There is also a setting to control paging/memory commit in the host setting but you shouldn't need to change the default running (allow some) with a single vm and 800 MB size unless you set a small vm size. On my 1gb rigs with 2 vms I have to change it too 'allow most' since the memory is heavily over committed.

I'm going to have to do a bit of playing with this.... am I right in assuming that more mem dedicated to the job is going to equate to better PPD, or are the work packets small enough that I'm actually wasting valuable mem space by setting it to the max?

Since I'm not doing much other than the folding within the VM, all I need for resources dedicated to it are those directly related to the folding.

I don't suppose anybody has already done the legwork on this have they??? :)